D1 scoring vs. HS Scoring

As scored, this is "scoring cop out" IMHO.

Ball was hit hard, so give the kid a hit. He ended up on second and it wasn't a double, so score it a hit and error? As described, it was either a double or two base error. The single/error scoring isn't right (again IMHO).

This is exactly the type of play I was referring to in the other thread. This play is scored a hit most of the time in the D1 games I attend. I've seen balls blistered at 3B that go off the chest, through the legs, etc. scored hits. I have trouble with any ball going through the legs of an infielder who doesn't have to move being called a hit. The only infielder who gets a pass here is the pitcher, who is normally out of optimal fielding position on the hard hit ball back up the middle and is doing little more than kicking at it. I score those hits.

In D1, a ball lost in the sun has ALWAYS been scored a hit. In the desert, we have a 20mph west wind, most right fields are very tough sun fields and we frequently have no clouds. Lots of balls get lost. I saw a game a few weeks ago where a kid went 3-4 with a 2B and 3B and 3 or 4 RBI. Looked great in the box score, but the single was a bunt and the 2B & 3B were both balls lost in the sun with runners on base and two outs. Could've been a weak 1-4.

When I see this kind of scoring, I get more generous at the HS level.

OK Heat,

When I read your post, I honestly laughed out loud. The way you made sure to note this was DI ball, and seemed almost amazed that at that level of ball there could be anything less than great everything, was the source of my amusement.

Who do you think scores games at the college level, even the highly vaunted DI level? I’ll grant you that its more likely to get a scorer at that level who actually knows and understands the scoring rules than it is at any level below, but I think if you did a survey, you’d find it isn’t a whole lot different than who keeps score in HS.

Even though stats have proven their worth at the ML level, and even though there are many coaches at lower levels who find good stats help them produce good baseball, there are still a great many people who don’t understand that the best and most useful stats are produced by the best scorekeepers.

But here’s the paradigm that seems to take over. Even stats that aren’t very well done are much better than none or bad ones, so there’s really no need to go crazy and make sure they’re done as well as possible. What TENDS to happen is, the ability and skill set of the SK TENDS to match the level of play on the field.

IOW, at the LL level, it isn’t likely you’ll find an SK with much experience, and will in many cases be a mom or dad of one of the team’s players. In HS, the scorer is most often a coach or player in the dugout, or a parent of one of the players who’s gotten sucked into the job, or volunteers to make sure his superstar gets credited with everything he should.

So who does it in college? I know when my son went to college, the coach was more than happy to turn the book over to me, along with all the BS that went with it. I.e., providing the scores and stats to him so he could send them into the centralized location for publication. But even then, I noticed that what went in was sometimes “modified” to make our guys look “better”.

I know the coach of one of the local DI schools here who had retired after coaching that team for 30 years, and we’ve spoken of this on a couple of occasions. He said that over the years he’d had many different SKs, but that it was difficult to get any consistency because of the travel.

Even if a parent lives close to the school attended by their child, not many can make it to away games. That means some coach or player gets handed the book, and I can tell you from many years of experience, not many players can keep a very good book, and many coaches are pretty bad too. So what ends up happening is, it’s a crapshoot as to how well the book is kept.

The D1 games I get to go see are at Arizona State and the University of Arizona. At ASU there are typically 3000+ in attendence and lots of media.

They have qualified scorekeepers to choose from.

U of A might have a few fewer fans, but just as many qualified scorers to choose from.

By qualified scorer, I refer to a member of the media with 20+ years of attending baseball games played at the D1 level.

The D1 games I typically get out to see are either at Arizona State or the University of Arizona.

These teams have members of the media present with 20+ years of covering D1 sports doing their scoring. They might be generous, but they're probably getting paid to do it...

quote:

Originally posted by Stats4Gnats:
OK Heat,

When I read your post, I honestly laughed out loud. The way you made sure to note this was DI ball, and seemed almost amazed that at that level of ball there could be anything less than great everything, was the source of my amusement.

Stats, I'm never quite sure how to take your replies. Not sure if your taking a shot at me or agreeing with me.

I started this thread from a comment from another thread, JMoff had noted that D1 scoring was very generous and it reminded me of the OU game I had watched earlier this season.

I am never surprised by inaccurate scorekeeping on any level. My son just finished his freshman season at a junior college and the scorekeeping there was consistently average with occasional mistakes and questionable hits or errors given. Earned and unearned runs were often wrong as well. The scorekeeper was generally a red shirted player or a injured player out of the line up, so that confirms one of your observations.

My son had to lobby the coaches for his first college win. He had pitched 3 innings of scoreless relief in a tie game. His team took a lead in the top of the next inning. A new pitcher took over in the bottom of the inning and pitched one inning and was incorrectly given the win.

It's that kind of stuff with coaches and scorekeepers that drive me crazy.

quote:

Originally posted by OK Heat:
Stats, I'm never quite sure how to take your replies. Not sure if your taking a shot at me or agreeing with me.

I started this thread from a comment from another thread, JMoff had noted that D1 scoring was very generous and it reminded me of the OU game I had watched earlier this season.

I am never surprised by inaccurate scorekeeping on any level. My son just finished his freshman season at a junior college and the scorekeeping there was consistently average with occasional mistakes and questionable hits or errors given. Earned and unearned runs were often wrong as well. The scorekeeper was generally a red shirted player or a injured player out of the line up, so that confirms one of your observations.

My son had to lobby the coaches for his first college win. He had pitched 3 innings of scoreless relief in a tie game. His team took a lead in the top of the next inning. A new pitcher took over in the bottom of the inning and pitched one inning and was incorrectly given the win.

It's that kind of stuff with coaches and scorekeepers that drive me crazy.

I assure you I wasn’t taking a shot at you. I also assure you that if and when I do, there will be no mistaking it.

Its just that over the last 20 years or so, I’ve become more and more aware of how people have been brainwashed into believing things about baseball that just aren’t true.

FI, when kids are in LL Minors, LL Majors seems the epitome of the game. When they get to LL Majors, the level that seems almost unreachable is travel ball on a ”select” team. From there its HS Fr ball, and for the Fr, it’s the JV team that leaves their mouth agape, and of course after that it really doesn’t get much better than the V. After that its being wowed by college ball or semi-pro, and of course after that it MLB.

But usually what people find when they get to whatever level is the next one, is that its really not a whole lot different than the level they just left. What I like to is try to get people to keep things in perspective, and that why I found what you said to be amusing. Not because you’re ignorant or foolish, but because there was just a bit of naiveté in it.

This is kind of a sidestep, but might explain part of the troubles with keeping score. As I noted, the level of scorekeepers generally match the levels of all the other participants in the game, but there are things that could make the whole process much better. The main thing would be to take all the rulebooks other than OBR and burn them!

Then every amateur organization could take OBR an add to it whatever modifications they felt was necessary. That way there’d only be one set of scoring rules! There’s absolutely no reason a game should be scored any differently for a 12YO LL team than a HS team, a college team, or a ML team. The way ERA is computed should never change, but the number of innings used in its computation does change, so why have a rule for it in every rule book? The same thing goes for stolen bases, hits, errors, or whatever. Scoring doesn’t change. The strike zone changes, but that has nothing to do with scoring. There a scads of safety rules, but they too have nothing to do with scoring.

The advantage of doing that is, whenever MLB change something in the scoring rules, everyone else would get it as well. Heck, most rule books still don’t define “Ordinary Effort”, but there’s an excellent explanation in OBR.

Then you have organizations like LL Inc who don’t even have scoring rules in their rulebook, or NFHS who have a totally different numbering system.

I’m just sayin’ that consistency makes life a lot easier for SK’s.

To Stats:

I guess I do expect D1 collegiate scorekeeping to be nearly as good as professional baseball because it is the highest level. What I believe JM's and my point is that offensive stats seem to be favored. You know, if it was hit hard, it's a hit even if a fielder could have made a play if they had come up with it clean. I think the higher batting averages and homeruns are sexier than batting average against, Low Whip, and Low ERA.

Obviously I speak from the perspective of a Pitchers father, scorekeeper, and math teacher. I want it done right so that offense, defense and pitching are truly represented by the numbers.

Fans like offense, I love a pitching duel. Fans want to see homeruns. Fans do love a no hitter or a guy that strikes out 15 or more. But Fans usually find a 3 hit, 1 ER, 4 K game fairly boring.

When I say Fan, I mean someone that comes to watch a game that doesn't have a kid playing in it.

I do agree with everything you said in your last post though. Have a good one

This would be fun over a beer because I think we'd all get along pretty well.

Part of scoring D1 that has been a little challenging over the years has been the bat type. When some kid who'll be playing AA ball in four weeks MASHES a ball with an Al bat at some poor kid 85' away, it's easy to say, "He'll be playing AA ball in four weeks, he crushed it, give him a hit".

I'm the pitcher's dad and an engineer, so I tend to be much more sympathetic to the pitchers and analytical in nature. I like rules and structure and sticking with them.

What I think is sometimes lost is applying "ordinary effort" to the level of play. If you watch a couple of hundred MLB games a year, it's easier to gravitate towards that level of scoring.

HS players simply aren't at that level, so you apply ordinary effort differently. D1 scoring is a method (one of many) of trying to get another data point to help determine what ordinary effort at the HS level should be.

Yeah, that **** “Ordinary Effort” thing really throws a crimp in things doesn’t it?

Another thing that really makes things difficult, is perspective, as both you and OK Heat have pointed out. Like you, I was a pitcher’s dad, and found it very difficult indeed to keep my biases in check, and I’m sure I didn’t always manage to do it. But as time has passed and while I still keep score, I no longer have skin in the game in the form of a child or relative. The closest I come now is knowing the kid from past years. I feel that’s really helped me get rid of all but the most deep rooted of biases, like not charging a pitcher with a fielding error other than on the most egregious of offenses.

Unfortunately, while I feel it has made me much more unbiased than most other scorers at the HS level, it presents a different set of ‘problems”. The main one is, my perspective. I always try very hard to be as close to directly behind the plate as possible, and on the right side of the plate to get the best view of the catcher and 1st base as possible. Unfortunately, the head coach’s perspective is NEVER the same as mine, and in more ways than just the view of the field.

I sit where I do to try to give all the fielder’s an equal chance to benefit from my perspective, and I try to get that view or close to it as often as possible to be as consistent as I can. FI, If I sat where I had a great view of the 1st basemen and the runner, I’d have the worst view of the 3rd baseman and left fielder, a poor view of the catcher, and a bad view to judge how close an infielder got to a ground ball. If I sit on the 3rd base side, the opposite would be true, and God forbid I sat in the dugout which has to be the worst place on the field to score a game from.

So, between the coach and I, we have a difference in the actual view of the field, but here’s what’s worse. We’re definitely focused on vastly different things, which in effect means we’re not watching the same game! Here’s a small example that happened in the last 2 games we played, one against a top local rival, and the other in our 1st playoff game.

We’re on defense late in the game and coach in the the 1st base dugout. 3-2 count on the batter, runners on 1st and 3rd with 2 outs and we’re losing by a run. Pitcher on the mound is in a fight for low ERA in the league. Batter hits a screamer a couple steps to the left of the SS. He jumps what had to be 3’ in the air, but the ball hits the top of his glove and rolls into the OF. The runner on 1st was running when the pitcher 1st moved, and was able to score all the way from 1st. I had a funny feeling, so between innings, I asked the coach hit or error. His replay was, “Whatever you think, but even I can catch a line drive hit at me.” Reluctantly I score it an error because while I think it was a hit because if the catch had been made it would have been on the highlight reel for 2 weeks. IOW, more than “ordinary effort”. However, there is a fine line that has to be navigated, and it was just close enough that I can live with it being marked an error.

Last game. We’re ahead by 7 runs in the top of the last inning, and our coach is in the 1st base dugout. Our hitter, a LHr is leading off. The other team has moved their DH to 1st base and a couple things are obvious. 1 is, at about 5’9/300, he’s in need of a conditioning program, and another is, since in the program he’s only had 9 defensive chances all season and 2 of those were errors, he’s not exactly Albert Pujols over there. The count gets to 2-2 and the 1B is playing pretty far back. Batter hits a solid shot 1 hopper right at the 1b. He moves his foot to get it out of the way, puts his glove down, but its not open! The ball hits the back of the glove and skitters onto the of. I mark it E3 without hesitation.

After every game, I send the coach the hitting, pitching, and fielding stats for just that game, and about an hour later I get a reply saying that ball was definitely a hit. I reply that I won’t argue, but I reminded him of the liner the game before, and of about 6 similar plays 3b’s had earned errors on.

So, a lot of it is in the perspective of the observer. I just wish coaches would let SKs score the game, and umpires umpire the game. In turn, those guys should let the coach coach the game, and everyone would be happy! LOL!